On the road, w/ three bears and a cloud
At the risk of causing uncontrollable laughter, this is the pile of personal technology I dragged along to the Miami Boat Show last month. Not just one computer, not even two, but a Three...
Yearly Archive: 2011
Life next to the Fast Lane
“Or how I gave up a boat load of electronics and learned to be happy sailing with just two gadgets!” is the subtitle of this guest entry by the good Sandy Daugherty. And while...
Accessory GPS for iPads plus: Dual XGPS150 vs Bad Elf
Over the last few weeks I’ve enjoyed testing two of the very few Apple-certified devices that can supply GPS to a WiFi-only iPad, as well as the iPod Touch. They are the Bad Elf, which...
AIS, a threat to our liberty?
I remember a few years ago when some boaters worried about “Big Brother” style AIS surveillance while the IMO fretted about hobbyists using shore receivers to display real time coastal AIS info on the Web. But all that seemed to go away, because — I think — people realized that AIS is indeed a public information network and that there is nothing especially threatening about its use by agencies or amateurs. But today I was struck by a “fatcat1111” comment stating that “I absolutely do not want to update the Fed with my location every 30 seconds” and that he or she hadn’t felt that way until they read the Practical Sailor article above by marine safety expert Ralph Naranjo. Well, maybe I’m completely blind about “personal freedom” but I’ve read Ralph’s article a few times now, and I just don’t get it…
The LightSquared problem, time to join “Save Our GPS”?
When many readers sent me the GPS World article on GPS jamming, I was blasé. How could the U.S. government possibly allow LightSquared to put up 4,600 transcievers pumping broadband data services in the L band with such power that they’d significantly interfere with nearby GPS frequencies? As in complete failure at over half a mile for a high quality civilian GPS receiver like the nüvi 265W
The Solar Stik power tower, & Ganz marine panels
I was glad to see the Solar Stik back at the Miami Show. I’d been impressed with the engineering — especially that sweet taper — when it was first introduced years ago, and it was nice to learn how many markets the company has found since. I also got a demo (that’s why the photo shows one of the two panels is completely removed, which took seconds), and thus I’m pretty sure that it would be easy to do the turning and tilting required to get the maximum power out the normal panel pair. I may romanticize the notion of putting one’s rum swizzel down every few hours to tune the solar array while laying in some tropical anchorage, but I don’t think there’s any denying that solar amps are directly related to angle of sunlight (15 degrees in any direction is the key fall-off point, according to the Stik guy). But would a power tower like this make sense on an amp-thirsty cruiser like Gizmo?
Furuno FM-4000: serious VHF, somewhat new
For those of us who need to be reminded that touch screen isn’t everything, don’t those big dedicated knobs and backlit buttons do the job? It’s Furuno’s recently introduced FM4000 VHF, which benefits from a good video guide here. I quip about “somewhat new” in the headline because there are numerous clues — like optional RAM+ mics and Bluetooth headset capabilities — which suggest that the FM4000 is a kissing cousin of Standard Horizon’s GX5500. There’s nothing wrong with shared expertise, in my view, and knowing it gives a consumer a better idea of what they’re getting into. Which is a seriously good and easy-to-use radio, I’m pretty sure.
Shakespeare VTronix YHK Sailboat Antenna
It’s easy to surmise from the appearance of a wind indicator on top, that the Shakespeare YHK antenna was optimized for sailboats. Beyond the wind indicator (which is optional), this antenna features (i) an...
AIS: Global SART detection, ASM info, & a bummer
While exciting things are happening on the frontiers of AIS, there’s still some tragic ignorance about what the technology can do right now for marine safety, even from folks who should know better. But...
MIBS # 5: C-Map, EarthNC, & MapMedia news
It’s a lousy photo, for sure, but Jeppesen C-Map has not yet announced its iPad charting app, let alone released screen shots, though I found it one of the nicest surprises of the Miami show. It seems that C-Map not only intends to match Navionics’ much appreciated efforts to offer inexpensive but detailed marine cartography on multiple apps platforms, but to do it even better. Note, for instance, the “CWeather” button on the menu bar above, and that C-Map has been working to overlay weather data on plotters since at least 2004 (though the then available mechanisms — a complicated cellular connection, or a data card transfer — were awkward). I’m not sure what CWeather offers today (the Jeppesen site says only European data), but we know that a connected tablet or phone can make the download process very easy.
